“If it’s all right, I’d like to go lie down…” I said to her.
She nodded, her eyes full of worry. “Are you feeling all right? Do you need some medicine?” She asked.
As soon as I’d taken my leave of absence from college and came home, she took me to a doctor for my anxiety. He was just a general practitioner, and wrote me a script for Xanax after asking me just a few questions. Only a quick trip to the pharmacy later, I was fumbling with a tiny orange bottle of pills in the car.
Now that bottle of pills was sitting on the shelf behind the mirror, with all but one of the pills piled neatly inside of it.
I didn’t like feeling like a loose noodle. And that’s what that drug did to me — it pulled me out of my body and made me not care about anything.
I couldn’t live like that, and I refused to take any more.
“No, I don’t need that, I just need to go lie down,” I said, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
As I left the kitchen, she called out behind me, “Are you sure you’re going to be okay? I have to go to a meeting tonight, so I won’t be home until late.”
A smile crossed my face. Luckily she couldn’t see.
“No, I’ll be fine. I’m just going to take a nap.”
But in my head, I was already making plans to go out.
After I closed my bedroom door and flopped onto my bed, I pulled out my phone and began to text the owner of the bar I secretly worked at sometimes. I needed some excuse to get out of the house; get out of this prison of safety.
My fingers shakily typed out, Any shifts available tonight?
I waited, and a few minutes later I got a response. “Yes. Get your ass here at 8.”
* * *
After a few hours of reading and trying to calm myself down, I snuck out of the house.
The therapist I was forced to see encouraged me to get out of the house and surround myself with people. Isolated environments weren’t good for the mind.
This bar was my escape. In this place, I would hear gossip of the real going-ons within the town. Every time there was someone new, I’d know about it almost immediately. If spouses were cheating, I’d hear the gossip instantly. Problems with the school district? Drama with the teachers and parents? It would all come to me.
And all I had to do to get it was make a few drinks.
Back in college, I learned how to make drinks because my roommate was a graduate student who was a part-time bartender. He taught me how to make all of these multicolored concoctions that were always a hit at the parties we’d have.
Parties I could tolerate before all that happened. Before the incident.
I muddied up the drink in front of me, preparing an old fashioned for an old man at the end of the bar who was going on about some woman he wanted to sleep with.
I tried to listen to him, but the bar was unusually busy tonight and I could only pay so much attention to one customer.
“Hey Luke,” my boss said, tapping my shoulder. I turned around to see her looking even more stern and tired than usual. “I need you to go around to the tables and take orders; we’re starting to lose customers.”
I looked up and sure enough, a group of people were walking out the door.
“You got it,” I agreed, eager to please her.
I owed her big time for looking the other way about my obviously fake I.D. She was taking a huge professional risk by agreeing to let me work here and paying me under the table.
But then again, no bartender in this town made drinks better than me or was nearly as well-liked. I didn’t even have to talk much; I just had to listen.
So I gathered up my notepad and went to the first table: A group of women. I took their orders for fruity drinks, then moved on to the next one. I stopped in my tracks.
What I thought I saw in front of me was that guy I’d seen at the bookstore earlier, but then I realized that I was mistaken. My heartbeat started to calm down as my eyes traced this man’s face, noticing how his jawline was thinner, his beard was well-trimmed, and his facial features were a little sharper.
“I’ll have a gin and tonic, please,” said a deep familiar voice from the shadows.
“Alright,” I said, scribbling it down on my pad.
Then I had to do a double-take.
In the shadows next to the customer I’d first seen, was unmistakably the guy from the book store.
He looked up at me and his face shifted into a shocked expression; then as soon as the surprise was there, it was gone again.
I was pausing above my pad, my pen poised.
The guy sitting next to him must have been his brother or something; they looked like they could be twins.
“Um… and what would you like, sir?” I asked the lookalike, my knees feeling weak.
There it was again. That undeniable sense of authority that was radiating from this stranger.
He shifted a little in the dark, and I swallowed nervously.
You’re on the clock! my manager’s voice echoed in my head.
“I’ll take a Paloma,” the lookalike answered.
I scribbled it down, my handwriting barely legible. “Okay… I’ll be right back with your drink…” I said, the heat rising in my cheeks. I was thankful it was dark in here, so my embarrassment couldn’t be seen by anyone else. It could only be felt.
Returning behind the bar, my hands were shaking as I prepared the drinks. Luckily I knew these drinks so well that I could pretty much go on autopilot as I combined the ingredients into the cocktails.
Was he watching me? Maybe it was my imagination, but it was almost
